Feeling “unbeatable” led to Catalan GP sprint crash

Alex Marquez says his crash while leading the Catalan Grand Prix sprint race happened at the moment he started to “relax” and felt “unbeatable”.

The Gresini rider made a clean start from pole position and built a buffer of nearly 1.5s as he started lap nine of 12 in Saturday’s half-distance MotoGP race in Barcelona.

But just as his victory looked assured, the 29-year-old lost the front-end of his GP24 at Turn 10 and slid into the gravel trap.

The crash ended all hopes of a first sprint victory since the British Grand Prix in May and a first podium in any format since his second-place finish at the Red Bull Ring last month.

Speaking afterwards, the Spanish rider conceded that he simply got too complacent and threw away an easy victory in front of his home crowd.

“Too relaxed. Too relaxed and feeling a bit unbeatable in that moment,” he said when explaining the error. “I see many times [that] confidence can also be dangerous. When you have confidence and you feel that it can never stop you. 

“A shock of reality, but better today than tomorrow. It’s better not to do that any day, but it was like this. We are fast, we’re confident, we have everything. Just that one mistake because I relaxed at that point. 

“I knew that I went a little bit wide, was just trying to stop the bike and come back to the line and then I lost the front. So just that. It was completely my fault, but [I got] too confident.”

Barring the German GP, the younger Marquez has endured a tough run of races since he fractured his left hand at Assen and had to undergo an operation.

He retired from the Czech GP in July, and could only manage 10th and 14th at Red Bull Ring and Balaton Park respectively after returning from the summer break. The second-place finish in the Austria sprint had begun to look like an outlier in an otherwise tricky run of results.

Asked if the performances of the last three rounds had forced him to push harder and wish for better results, Marquez said: “Wishing more, because I was still feeling okay at the moment, but especially too confident on the bike during this weekend. 

“What I’m doing on the bike all this weekend, the bike is responding, the bike is there. [But I’m] trying too much, too hard. So completely my mistake. I felt quite stupid when I saw myself on the gravel.”

Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Marquez stressed that he must remain focused in Sunday’s main race at Barcelona, as he remains the favourite for victory despite his sprint race ending in the gravel.

“Just make the same start, the same first laps, and then breathe a little bit. Not lose focus. That’s what I need to do,” he said. “Today, it was good advice for us, for me especially, to feel that you’re not in a better world. So, it’s freestyle, and you need to control that. 

“We are riding really fast and the limit is really close. So, for that reason, we need to be more focused than ever.”